BlizzCon General Pass winners have been emailed on Saturday 11/2. Please respond by the evening of November 3rd to ensure your prize is not forfeit.

BlizzCon 2013 is soon. Really soon, in fact. And we're not sure if you guys know this or not, but we're having a party.

A huge party.

From 5pm to 11pm on Thursday, Nov 7th we're hosting a party with WoW Insider at the Anabella hotel right next to where BlizzCon is being held that anyone in the area can attend. There will be awesome sponsors, tons of prizes, and tons of well-known World of Warcraft faces including some Blizzard staff and popular streamers. We've even got GUNNAR hosting a photobooth where you'll be able to take your photo with some Azeroth-inspired weapons.

The best news? We're inviting sixteen of you who couldn't make it to come join us and also come along with us to BlizzCon!

Thanks again to the generosity of Blizzard, Wowhead and Hearthhead combined have sixteen BlizzCon passes. While we don't have airfare for you and you might have to work to find a hotel, these tickets are hard to come by so late in the game and we're giving them away! All you have to do is reply to this post to be entered to win. Please be nice and if there is zero chance you can make it, don't enter just to win. We know it's last minute, but there are people who are in state or able to spring for a last minute vacation, so we are really hoping to find genuine homes for these passes.

To be entered to win, tell us what you are looking forward to the most at BlizzCon 2013!

Oh, and if you can't make it this year? Don't worry. We're livestreaming our whole party and we're going to be giving away tons of BlizzCon goodies on our site! It won't be quite the same as being there with us, but we'll be putting on an epic show with Gamebreaker so be sure to tune in!

Since this contest is extremely time sensitive, we'll be ending it tomorrow, Friday November 1st, at 11:59PM PDT. We will be emailing winners this Saturday and Blizzard will be rushing those tickets out on Monday--much like the BlizzCon in a Box prizes, if you don't reply in time, your prize is forfeit.

While this tool is going to have even more awesome features added to it, right now you can use it to craft your own decks and navigate the sea of cards--picking the ones you like the most. You can even share your customized decks with your friends. Be sure to also check out all of the latest and updated Hearthstone cards directly in our Hearthstone database as well.

To sweeten the deal, we're giving away Hearthstone beta keys all weekend to people who post in this thread with a link to their favorite deck they built on the deckbuilder. We have picked winners and they will be emailed shortly. Due to how in demand the beta is, we are only posting the winners' names in the comments rather than on the post so people have to do some digging before they can beg those people for keys.

You can play as nine different mighty heroes with different focuses. There will be commons, rares, epics, and even legendary cards. It will be free-to-play with optional purchases for cards; there's also something called a crafting system, where you will be able to change your cards by disenchanting them into arcane dust which will let you build other cards. To learn more, check out the following:

Hearthstone Closed Beta Test Begins

Blizzard

Here’s a card we’ve been dying to play: The closed beta test for Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft has begun in the Americas region!

During the closed beta test, we’ll be inviting a range of duelers from our opt-in pool (along with folks from press and fansites) to try their hand at Hearthstone and let us know what they think. There’s no NDA during the beta, and we’d love to hear all about your epic victories, watch your live streamed matches, and see screenshots and videos sharing your experiences with the game. Please note that Hearthstone is still in development, and what you see and play in the beta test isn’t necessarily representative of what to expect in the final game.

Want to participate in beta testing Hearthstone? Read on!

How do I opt in to the closed beta test?

Once you’ve set up a Battle.net account, you can choose to opt in to our beta test from the Beta Profile page. You’ll need to download and run the System Check tool to attach your computer’s specifications to your beta profile. Once that’s complete it’s simply a matter of waiting for an invite.

We’ll send you an email letting you know if you’re selected. The email will contain a beta key—just follow the instructions inside to get started.

As always, please be aware of phishing attempts—falsified emails sent by unscrupulous individuals purporting to be from Blizzard, but their real goal is to steal your login credentials. For more information on how to identify these emails, please refer to our Battle.net Security site.

One easy way to ensure your invite is legit is to avoid clicking on links in any invite emails you receive. Instead, just log in to your Battle.net account and add the beta key from your invite email to your account.

How many players do you plan on inviting to the beta test?

The number of players we invite to the Hearthstone beta will be based on our testing needs. During the course of testing we’ll be inviting additional opt-ins as necessary in waves.

Is there an NDA?There is no NDA for the Hearthstone beta test. Take screenshots, live-stream matches, record movies—whatever your heart desires! Please keep in mind that the game is still a work in progress, and we appreciate your understanding when you encounter bugs, graphical errors, or other issues. Help us create a better game for everyone to enjoy by reporting them here!

How long will the beta test last?

We have not determined an exact date for the end of the beta test. We’ll post a notice when the beta test is nearing completion.

Do I get to keep all my beta cards?

We are planning to wipe all player collections partway through the closed beta. We anticipate needing to rebalance some cards based on the feedback we get in the closed beta, and recognize that players may have made decisions on which cards to disenchant or craft based on information that’s changing. After we’ve completed that wave of balance testing and wiped cards, we do not anticipate needing to reset collections again.

Players who purchased card packs or Arena entry with real money prior to the collection wipe will be credited back with an equivalent amount of gold following the wipe, which can be used to re-purchase packs and/or Arena entry to re-establish their collection. These packs will not contain the same configuration of cards as the packs acquired previous to the collection reset.

To get started, just go to Tools > Battle Pet Team Calculator and click to add pets! You can create your own teams, import Battle.net character teams, look at trainer teams, and compare teams with our new tool.

With the Celestial Tournament requiring you to level a bunch of pets simply to participate, now is the time to start leveling your pets and thinking about making the perfect pet team.

We've also added Battle Pet Calculator buttons on trainer and collectible pet pages--clicking on the button opens up a new calculator with the specific pet.

Battle.net Teams

With the announced removal of the battle pet section from Blizzard's own character profiles, Wowhead's battle pet team calculator will still provide an easy way to look up in-game teams. Just enter in a region, realm, and character name, and click load!

Selecting a Battle.net character also gives you the option to build future pet teams only using that character's collected set of pets. When adding a pet to a team, you'll be prompted to select between all collectible pets or a character's unique set of pets.

Comparing Pet Teams

Simply click on the "Compare" button to switch to a comparison view. You can compare your team to other player teams, custom teams, most battle pet trainer teams, and elite pets. When 5.4 hits, you'll be able to see how your team holds up against the Celestial Tournament teams too!

Pet Summary

At the bottom of the page, we've provided a breakdown of your selected pets and abilities:

Buffs: Abilities that apply auras, buffs, and debuffs. Mousing over icons displays the ability as well as the aura.

States: Abilities that apply states which other abilities can exploit (Chilled, Bleeding, Poisoned, etc).

Weather: Abilities that apply weather effects or benefit from them.

When comparing two teams, the pet summary will update to show what pets specifically are affected by your Strong and Weak abilities. We've also greyed out abilities that aren't affected by the enemy team, to highlight important abilities better.

We're open to adding additional details in the summary section, so if you have any suggestions, let us know.

We're hiring again at Wowhead. This time we're looking for a system administrator with experience in maintaining websites in a high-traffic high-availability environment. This system administrator will work with our technical team to help make awesome new features for LolKing, Wowhead, and other ZAM properties. This is a 3 month contract position with a possibility of extending to full time. This role has the possibility of working remotely or working from the ZAM offices in Northern California depending on the candidate's location.

Want to work with world-class web applications at a company built by gamers for gamers?

Are you extremely detail oriented?

Do you know to not stand in fire?

Come and work in an environment where you can go as far as your skills and drive can take you.

As you guys probably know, Wowhead exists as a free resource thanks to the ads on our website. Every few months we run surveys regarding advertising here and it's that time again! Remember that you are under no obligation to participate, so if giving out information is not your cup of tea, we totally understand.

To sweeten the deal, we'll be picking six people who reply to our survey to win Amazon gift cards:

With all the recent 5.4 PTR coverage, it's a good time to step back and highlight some of the cool projects and database improvements our dev team has been working on. We've added image galleries to our search results, some new loot specialization tools, and more!

Image Gallery: Search Results and "Same Model As" Tab

We've added image search results, generated by our 3D Modelviewer, for all armor and weapons! To view the image results, simply click on the Gallery tab next to the default Name option. Clicking on an image will open up our 3D modelviewer, and clicking on the name will take you to the item's page.

We've also turned the Same Model As tab on all armor and weapon pages into an image gallery as well. With images for all items, players can easily spot what armor not only has a matching style, but also identical colors--a popular site request among our transmog users.

Loot Specialization Filters

Patch 5.3 introduced the Loot Specialization system, which allowed players to more easily collect off-spec loot. By pre-selecting a loot specialization, all items acquired from questing, Bonus Rolls, LFR, and Heroic Scenarios would be suitable for that spec--regardless of what spec the player currently is.

Whether you need to know loot specialization details for planning out bonus rolls or knowing what spec has a quest reward that's a unique transmog model, we've added some tools to Wowhead to help you out.

Loot Specialization details have been added to raid boss pages. We've added a row of class buttons on top of each boss' loot table--click on a particular class to see spec details in the Type column. You can clear results by clicking on the All button.

In search results, if a pet has multiple breeds, there will be a dotted line underneath the displayed Breed information. Clicking on that brings up a simple list of the other Breed options, and selecting a different breed will modify the pet's stats accordingly.

And as a refresher course on breeds: they're are simply another way Blizzard creates variance with their battle pets. There are ten possible Breeds--of which each pet is assigned only a few. These breeds affect a pet's stats in unique ways, which we display on our battle pet pages with percentages.

Spell Data Refinements

We're also continuing to refine how our spell data is displayed:In Patch 5.4, in-game trinket tooltips will show proc per minute information. We've updated our tooltips accordingly to display proc per minute and ICD details--but due to how Blizzard has handled the data, you'll have to visit our PTR domain for this information until Patch 5.4 goes live.Under the Spell Detail section on each spell page, we've added information on a spell's flags--useful when theorycrafting. Clicking on each flag will open up a list of spells that share that particular flag as well.Spell pages now display a Modifies tab, in addition to Modifies By. Useful for deciphering vague tooltips and figuring out what abilities are affected by set bonuses, glyphs, masteries, class abilities, legendary procs, and more!

We had some site downtime today and we wanted to share with everyone why that was--and don't worry, it's good news!

In short, we have just completed migrating servers and getting Wowhead stabilized on its new home. This change will allow us to have better uptime, faster load times, and allow us to create more awesome features in the future.

It will also fix a couple of notorious issues people have been having with our site. Many of you probably remember an issue where pages were not loading correctly. While we fixed it for many people, it was a reoccurring problem for a few regions despite our best efforts. You'll be relieved to hear that this should be fixed by our server migration.

The next few hours are crucial for us so be sure to report any issues you find in the comments here so we can investigate them thoroughly. Moving a site as huge as Wowhead is not without its difficulties, but this will alleviate the server issues we've been having over the past month and bring greater stability to our users in the future. Thanks for your patience, you guys!

Edit: If you are still experiencing issues, please check out this thread. We've fixed some critical bugs like Russian Wowhead and uploading images not working properly, and have a known list of issues we're still addressing.

We're proud to announce that Olivia Grace will be joining our ZAMOfficial YouTube channel with a new weekly show, Talk Azeroth! You may recognize Olivia from her prolific articles on WoW Insider covering everything from PvP news to breaking news to UI advice. She's also one of the Legendary hosts over at Gamebreaker.tv, which Lore from TankSpot hosted before starting his new job at Blizzard!

Episode Summary:

This week on the very first episode of Talk Azeroth, Olivia Grace waxes lyrical on the departure of her predecessor to the sunny shores of Blizzard Entertainment, and recounts her own tale of her recent visit to Blizzard EU in Paris, where she got to play Hearthstone, as well as grilling Blizzard developers Ben Brode and Eric Dodds on the upcoming CCG.

Moving in to the more Warcraft-focused news, Olivia brings us up to date on the WoW movie, with a short potted history, before wondering whether it will be a success, theorizing what route might work best for Blizzard's box office, and asking whether it is a good idea at all.

Last up, we take a look at a recently datamined desktop client. It looks like a complete replacement for the existing launchers, and Olivia takes a look at what we can glean from the pictures before discussing some hopes and fears for the new system.

If you have questions you'd like answered on this week's topics, or in general, leave a comment or video response, or tweet Olivia on @oliviadgrace.

Hearthstone's beta is coming this summer and we've got our first peek at the game's cards!

We've added all of the cards and Hearthstone data to Wowhead as a brand new section so you guys can browse Hearthstone updates while you're still using Wowhead. We've created filters, tooltips, and other features that you've come to know and love from using Wowhead--including our awesome image search that you've probably seen from our unique battle pet and transmog set features.